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Stoney deGeyter is the author of The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!. He is the founder and CEO of Pole Position Marketing, a web presence optimization firm who's pit crew has been velocitizing websites since 1998. In his free time Stoney gets involved in community services and ministries with his bride enjoy and his children. Read Stoney's full bio.

Of course your shoppers know when they added a product to their shopping cart, they clicked the button that says, “Add to Cart!”
But let me ask you this. Have you ever stood in front of somebody’s door and rang the doorbell? What happened?
I’m guessing, if you could hear the doorbell ring, you were content to wait for an answer. But what if you didn’t? If you’re anything like me, you probably hit the doorbell button again, or even knocked just to make sure.
It’s no different with your website visitors. If visitors don’t get some kind of confirmation that the button they just clicked actually did what they intended, they’ll want to verify. And that verification removes the shopper from the sales process.
Imagine putting an item in your cart at the grocery store but not being able to see it. The only way to know what’s in your cart for certain is to find a clerk and ask them. Pretty annoying, right? Eventually, you just might get tired of shopping there.
When visitors click an “add to cart” button, make sure they know their product was successfully added without forcing them to go into the shopping cart page itself. [Tweet This] This can easily be accomplished by producing a simple pop up message that reads “added to cart” (or something similar) or, even better, by having the new product appear in an already visible minicart somewhere on the page.
These visual confirmations keep the visitor focused on shopping, not on whether or not the products they want are in their carts or not. Once the shopper disengages from the shopping process, there is a higher probability of them “checking out” early. And many of them will “check out” without making any purchase whatsoever.

Stoney deGeyter is the author of The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!. He is the founder and CEO of Pole Position Marketing, a web presence optimization firm who's pit crew has been velocitizing websites since 1998. In his free time Stoney gets involved in community services and ministries with his bride enjoy and his children. Read Stoney's full bio.

It’s the question that anyone using social media as part of their web marketing wants the answer to: Does social media impact search engine rankings?
Most SEOs agree that social media marketing itself has very little direct impact on rankings. That means that doing X via social media rarely results in rankings going up.
But that doesn’t mean that social media doesn’t have any value in regards to SEO. In fact, the opposite is true. As far as we know, search engines are currently not using direct social media signals as part of their ranking algorithm. However, the benefits received from social media often do translate to those things that the search engine algorithms care a great deal about.
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Stoney deGeyter is the author of The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!. He is the founder and CEO of Pole Position Marketing, a web presence optimization firm who's pit crew has been velocitizing websites since 1998. In his free time Stoney gets involved in community services and ministries with his bride enjoy and his children. Read Stoney's full bio.

We’ve all been there. You’re trying to have a conversation with someone who is just standing Too. Close. They could be giving you the secrets to immortality or unbelievable wealth, and all you’re thinking is “Back Off. Back Off. BACK OFF!!” Or worse yet, “What the heck did he eat!” Regardless, maintaining the proper personal space is an unspoken social norm that we expect all people to respect. When they don’t, it makes us uncomfortable and distracted.
You are likely cringing right now thinking about someone who has invaded your personal space. But could you be doing the same thing to your visitors on your website?… Continue Reading

Stoney deGeyter is the author of The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!. He is the founder and CEO of Pole Position Marketing, a web presence optimization firm who's pit crew has been velocitizing websites since 1998. In his free time Stoney gets involved in community services and ministries with his bride enjoy and his children. Read Stoney's full bio.

Are local and mobile optimization things you plan to get around to “someday?” Well, someday is now. Local and mobile optimization are no longer two separate strategies. They go hand in hand and need to be addressed NOW. Otherwise, you could be missing out on business that could literally be led right to your front door.
Read my latest article in The SEMPost to get quick tips on how to get your site optimized for BOTH local and mobile.
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Stoney deGeyter is the author of The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!. He is the founder and CEO of Pole Position Marketing, a web presence optimization firm who's pit crew has been velocitizing websites since 1998. In his free time Stoney gets involved in community services and ministries with his bride enjoy and his children. Read Stoney's full bio.

We all love good search engine rankings. But one thing I’ve been realizing more and more lately is that we need to stop treating search engine rankings as if they are the goal of our online marketing efforts. In fact, too many people are running the wrong race. Rankings are not the goal, they are the trophy of a job well done. [Tweet This]
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Stoney deGeyter is the author of The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!. He is the founder and CEO of Pole Position Marketing, a web presence optimization firm who's pit crew has been velocitizing websites since 1998. In his free time Stoney gets involved in community services and ministries with his bride enjoy and his children. Read Stoney's full bio.

Image credit: jessicahtam
Not every shopper wants or is ready to buy your product or service right this moment. There is nothing you can do about that. But what you can do is encourage them to come back later.
A good method of doing just that is to provide an “add to wishlist” or “save for later” option in your shopping cart. You don’t want this call to action to be equal to or to overpower the primary “add to cart” or “checkout” options, but as a smaller, secondary option in case they are not ready to buy now.
Allowing visitors to save items in their cart will often lead to more sales later. [Tweet This]
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Stoney deGeyter is the author of The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!. He is the founder and CEO of Pole Position Marketing, a web presence optimization firm who's pit crew has been velocitizing websites since 1998. In his free time Stoney gets involved in community services and ministries with his bride enjoy and his children. Read Stoney's full bio.

Content is an important part of your web marketing campaign. Not only is it your primary way to communicate value, but it also helps you build much needed authority.
But good web marketing doesn’t end with content, even if it super-duper great content. If fact, that’s just one element of a successful marketing campaign. The best content on earth won’t do you any good if no one sees it. It’s like a great band playing to empty seats. Great content needs to be both optimized and promoted over social media to have an impact. [Tweet This]
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Stoney deGeyter is the author of The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!. He is the founder and CEO of Pole Position Marketing, a web presence optimization firm who's pit crew has been velocitizing websites since 1998. In his free time Stoney gets involved in community services and ministries with his bride enjoy and his children. Read Stoney's full bio.

Think checklists are for novices? Think again. Keeping web marketing checklists helps ensure you don’t forget things, helps you get back on the right track when you get distracted, ensure consistency, and more. To me, navigating the massive world of web marketing is like wandering around blind.
In addition to listing the many, many advantages to using web marketing checklists, I will tell you what types of checklists you can have, when to use them, and what should be in them in my latest article for Search Engine Land.
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Stoney deGeyter is the author of The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!. He is the founder and CEO of Pole Position Marketing, a web presence optimization firm who's pit crew has been velocitizing websites since 1998. In his free time Stoney gets involved in community services and ministries with his bride enjoy and his children. Read Stoney's full bio.

You have great content and calls to action. You’ve made sure you’ve addressed every thing the customer could want to know about your product or services. Specifications? Check. Value/Benefits? Check. What’s in it for them? Check? But you’re still not getting the conversions you had hoped. Why not?
Maybe you have not provided the right justifications.
Every visitor ultimately must be able to justify their decision to buy your product or service, or otherwise do business with you. [Tweet This]
Sure they may know they want it and need it, but they have to justify it as well. And not just to themselves, but often to another financially responsible partner.
A visitor who cannot justify pulling the trigger right now won’t, regardless of how pressing their need is. It’s your job to make sure it’s an easy decision to say yes. And not just yes, I’ll think about it but, yes, I’ll do it right now!

Stoney deGeyter is the author of The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!. He is the founder and CEO of Pole Position Marketing, a web presence optimization firm who's pit crew has been velocitizing websites since 1998. In his free time Stoney gets involved in community services and ministries with his bride enjoy and his children. Read Stoney's full bio.

The use of structured data started long before local search engine optimization became a big deal, but using structured data for natural optimization is far less essential than for the local.
For the most part, using structured data for organic SEO is about getting some rich snippets into the search results. For local SEO however it can have a strong impact on your local rankings.… Continue Reading

"Our clients often tell us we're one in a million. Turns out we're really just one of a hundred thousand or so. But what they're really saying is that we get results that increase traffic, sales and ROI! Number one of a million? Yeah, that's where we put you when we velocitize your web marketing."